'Garbage, Grievance, and the Gospel of Cruelty'
"I’ve spent my whole life learning the language of bullies. Not from books or movies, but from the way my small body learned to brace before my mind even understood the danger. From the way a room could shift, sharpen, turn hostile without a single word spoken. Bullies raised me, shaped me, tried to script my story before I ever got the chance to write it myself. Their fingerprints are pressed into parts of me I’ve spent decades trying to soften."
"And a few days ago, Trump did what he always does — bullied, demeaned, dehumanized — but this time it hit a place in me I thought had finally gone still. Harsher. Deeper. Like someone pressed a thumb into an old bruise that never fully faded. He spat out two cruelties without blinking — the R-word degrading jab tossed off like a bored reflex, and then, half-asleep in that cabinet room, he still found the energy to call Somalis in America 'garbage.' It was the degrading jab that stung first, but it was 'garbage' that lodged under my ribs. The way he said it. The way his whole cabinet pounded on the table like rabid animals, cheering as he called American citizens garbage. Mothers. Fathers. Kids who came here chasing the promise this country claims to offer. The sound of that room erupting in approval echoed something I’ve spent a lifetime trying to unlearn."
"Maybe it landed harder yesterday because it was a Sunday in December — a gray, quiet day when everything in the air felt reflective, and everything inside me felt a little more exposed, a little more tender."
"Or maybe it’s because my dad came here as a teenager from Lebanon with skin so dark people treated him like he didn’t belong in the country he was desperate to build a life in. It didn’t harden him though. He spent fifty years working for our Department of Defense. He loved this country. He believed in it. He instilled that love and belief in me. But Donald Trump, that evil piece of shit, would probably call him 'garbage.' "
Continued at link:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jojofromjerz/p/garbage-grievance-and-the-gospel?r=r38w4&utm_medium=ios